Kirby Star Allies

Title (JP)

Publisher

Nintendo

Release

March 16, 2018

Genre

Action, 2D Platformer

Rating

Platform(s)

Nintendo Switch

Kirby Star Allies (sometimes written Kirby: Star Allies), known in Japan as 星のカービィ スターアライズ (Hoshi no Kabi: Sutā Araizu, meaning Kirby of the Stars: Star Allies), is a game in the Kirby series that was released on March 16, 2018 worldwide, and a demo on March 1 (EU)[1] and March 4 (US)[2]. It is the first game in the series released for the Nintendo Switch.

Contents

Story

Spoiler alert: Plot-specific details are within this box

In a part of space far away from Planet Popstar, a cloaked figure casts a spell on a large crystal heart, causing countless Jamba Heart pieces to scatter across the universe as a result. Many of these pieces fall down to Dream Land, where they corrupt anyone they touch. When one dissolves into Kirby, however, it grants him the ability to throw Friend Hearts that befriend anyone they touch. Kirby notices some Waddle Dees carrying a large amount of food to King Dedede's Castle, which has become surrounded by dark clouds; Kirby sets off to investigate this mysterious phenomenon.[3]After defeating Dedede, Kirby and his friends celebrate, but the celebration is cut short when it is revealed that a Jamba Heart caused the trouble. Kirby purses the escaping Jamba Heart piece, chasing it through Popstar, and eventually freeing Meta Knight from corruption. When a giant fortress then lands on the surface of the planet, Kirby and friends investigate.

Approaching the fortress, which is named Jambastion, the Fortress of Shadows, Kirby and his friends battle Pon and Con, who are guarding Gatehouse Road. Afterwards, Kirby and his friends enter the fortress itself, and work their way up to the top of the structure. Along the way, they encounter the three Jambastion mages: Francisca, Flamberge, and Zan Partizanne. Francisca, the ice mage, is the first one encountered of the three. She explains that her task is to reassemble the Jamba Heart pieces to achieve some evil goal, and she warns Kirby not to interfere; however, the Star Allies soon defeat her and move on. They next battle Flamberge, the fire mage, who is extremely angry that Kirby harmed Francisca. At the top of the structure, however, the group finds Zan Partizanne, the lightning mage and the leader of the three. After commenting that Kirby had turned out to be more of an annoyance than she had expected, she attacks, but is defeated like the others. In desperation, she destroys Jambastion's power core, causing the fortress to crumble. Zan Partizanne escapes, and, with the help of the Friend Circle and Friend Star, the Star Allies do the same.

After escaping the fortress, Kirby and his friends find themselves deep in space, far away from Popstar. Continuing onwards, they traverse the various planets and moons of the galaxy. On Blizzno Moon, Kirby and his friends find Francisca once again, who is continuing her search for Jamba Heart pieces. She is surprised that Kirby survived Jambastion's destruction, and so decides to defeat him once and for all. However, she is the one who loses, and Kirby knocks her into the distance. While traversing through Sizzlai Moon, the Star Allies once again encounter Flamberge, who is taking a rest from hunting for Jamba Heart pieces. After defeating her, Kirby and his friends finally arrive to the mages' base of operations located at the edge of the galaxy, and traveling inward, they enter The Divine Terminus.

At the end of this level, the Star Allies discover a strange altar, where the cloaked figure, Hyness, is performing a ritual on the partially-complete Jamba Heart. Before Kirby can approach Hyness, however, Zan Partizanne appears and blocks Kirby's path to prevent him from interrupting the ceremony. She fights fiercely, but like before, is defeated. Unable to get up, she calls to Hyness, begging him for help. Hyness comes over, and swatting Zan Partizanne out of the way, faces Kirby. He realizes that the Jamba Heart does not have enough energy for the ritual, and upset by the fact, goes into a frenzied rant. Here, Hyness explains his history, stating that his people were banished to the edge of the galaxy because others feared their immense magical power, despite how Hyness' people helped solve a galactic crisis. Hyness yells that throughout the banishment, his only goal has been to revive his Dark Lord, who is contained in the Jamba Heart. To prevent Kirby from interrupting the revival ceremony, Hyness attacks; upon his defeat, Hyness' mask falls off, sending him into madness. He summons the three unconscious Jambastion mages to himself, draining their life force and using their bodies as weapons. Despite this measure, though, Hyness is defeated again and thrown onto the ground. Getting up, he moves slowly over to the altar, realizing that an offering to the Dark Lord is the only option. He throws himself and the three unconscious mages into the Jamba Heart, and the Dark Lord, Void Termina, awakens. The Jamba Heart dissolves into a dark cloud, and Void Termina escapes.

The Star Allies then form the Star Allies Sparkler, and they fly off in pursuit of Void Termina. When they track it down on a circular arena in deep space, it solidifies into a titanic being, and the final battle begins. Midway through the fight, Kirby and his friends enter Void Termina to battle the core, where they find Francisca, Flamberge, Zan Partizanne, and Hyness wrapped in cocoons. After defeating the core for the first time, those four, along with the Star Allies, are ejected, and the fight resumes. Once Kirby and his friends defeat the core for a second time, Void Termina's body dissolves, leaving only the core, its true form, behind. With the help of all the friends Kirby made over his journey, he completely destroys Void Termina, ending the threat. With peace restored, the Star Allies fly back to Popstar, which is now freed from the Jamba Heart's corruption.

End of spoilers

Gameplay

This section is currently under construction

Kirby Star Allies is a traditional platformer Kirby game, in which the player controls Kirby, whose objective is to get to the end of each stage through the use of Copy Abilities. Kirby retains his traditional moves; the Inhale, Star Spit, Slide attack, Air Gun, and floating.

The game is a 2.5D platformer, meaning that the characters move on a two-dimensional plane in a 3D environment.

Two game mechanics return from previous installments of the Kirby series; those of Mix abilities (from Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards and Kirby: Squeak Squad, though in this game they are called Friend Abilities) and Helpers (from Kirby Super Star and its remake, though they are here referred to as "friends"). In a manner similar to the mechanic shown in the trailer for the unreleased Kirby GCN, there can be four player-controlled or CPU-controlled friends at one time. Kirby can throw a Friend Heart[4] at certain types of enemies in order to turn it into a friend by using the X button; friends can also throw Friend Hearts in order to change their ability. Kirby and his friends can also do the same with Copy Essences and Ability Stars. Even if Kirby has no friends, another player can join, taking Kirby's current ability similar to the helper mechanic in previous games; Kirby can also turn a friend into an ability item by performing "Unfriend," which replaces the Drop Ability function if Kirby has none; this can also be achieved by throwing a Friend Heart at an enemy while already having three friends, and opting to cancel the action instead of replacing one of them. Friends can assist Kirby in multiple ways, allowing for combo moves such as creating a circular formation that allows them to roll ahead in certain areas. The player can also mix Friend Abilities by holding up on the analog stick and having a partner using an attack on the player's character. Players can also revive a friend that has no HP, recovering only half of their total HP.

Additionally, there are two sub-games separate from the main game. They are small, competitive sub-games that also support up to four players at once. Star Slam Heroes is a timing-based game strongly reminiscent of Megaton Punch, where Kirbys power up a flaming baseball bat and attempt to smack a meteor the farthest distance. Chop Champs sees players using Joy-Con motion commands to try to chop as much wood as possible with their Kirby within a time limit while avoiding bugs and Gordos.

The game will feature 28 standard Copy Abilities, as well as the ability to mix certain abilities together into Friend Abilities, similarly to how mixing abilities worked in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards and Kirby: Squeak Squad. Abilities in italics are new, abilities in bold can be permanently imbued with an element.

Objects

Tips

How to swap your ability with a helper's:
Hold Y to drop your ability. Hold Y again to "unfriend" the helper directly in front of you, turning them into an item. Press X to turn your former ability star into a helper, then grab the item to gain the former helper's ability.

Demo

This section is currently under construction

The demo for Kirby Star Allies was released on March 1 in European regions and March 4 in North America. It includes only two levels with different difficulty, an easy Green Greens stage, and a hard Cave/Castle stage.

amiibo Compatibility

This section is currently under construction

During Story Mode, the player can scan an amiibo. Scanning a Kirby-related amiibo (both from the Kirby series and their Super Smash Bros. counterparts) will give two Point Stars, either a Maxim Tomato or a Pep Brew, and two Picture Pieces. The same goes for scanning the Qbby amiibo from BoxBoy!, except it gives a milk carton Food item instead.

Scanning any other amiibo will give two Point Stars, a cherry, and one Picture Piece.

In addition, the game will only allow 7 different amiibos to be scanned per Stage attempt. The count resets if the player exits the stage without clearing it.

Transcript

Trivia

Kirby Star Allies greatly resembles the first attempt at Kirby GCN, a canceled game for the Nintendo GameCube. It resembles Kirby's Return to Dream Land as well, though this is because Kirby GCN was reworked into Kirby's Return to Dream Land.

Friends reflect the colors of the player playing them. Any friends who are player 2 are yellow, friends who are player 3 are blue, and friends who are player 4 are green. This concept is reused from Kirby GCN. It, however, applies only to common enemies and midbosses; special characters (such as King Dedede and Gooey) always retain their normal coloration.

This is the first Kirby game to be localized into Chinese, in both Traditional and Simplified forms.

Possible release date of Kirby Star Allies which was then proven false

Before Kirby Star Allies’ release date was revealed to be March 16, 2018 in the January 11 Nintendo Direct Mini, the official Nintendo website's Game Store page listed the game's release date as June 30, 2018. This may have just been a placeholder release date/window before an actual release date was officially announced.

Kirby Star Allies is the fourth Kirby game to have an E10+ ESRB rating.

On January 27, 2018, the My Nintendo rewards program released a Kirby Star Allies-themed calendar for the month of February. It was discovered to be a January calendar, as the month had 31 days instead of 28, and Valentine's Day was marked as the second Sunday of the month rather than the second Wednesday. This mistake was corrected shortly after.[5]

When the official Japanese website of Kirby Star Allies launched on February 14, 2018, the URL initially misspelled the game's title as "Star Arise." This was corrected shortly afterward, and the misspelled URL now redirects to the correct one. (The English words "Allies" and "Arise" have the same spelling in katakana.

Kirby Star Allies is the first traditional platformer in the series to name individual stages.

Como is currently the only returning enemy in this game to receive a redesign between games, due to the inclusion of the Spider ability.

In the March 8 Nintendo Direct, when Gooey is shown as a future update Dream Friend, they state that his debut was in Kirby's Dream Land 3, when he actually debuted in Kirby's Dream Land 2 as a non-playable character.

Kirby Star Allies is also the first game where Kirby's lives extend over 99.

The first letter of all seven stages found on Planet Popstar, including the two unlockable stages, spell out the word "FRIENDS", which ties into the theme of friendship present in the game, as well as the game's main mechanic. This is a trait that is present in several previous Kirby titles (Kirby's Adventure, Kirby: Canvas Curse, Kirby's Return to Dream Land, Kirby: Triple Deluxe and Kirby: Planet Robobot).